BJP Bengal warns party leaders over laxity during proposed SIR drive

Kolkata: West Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya has told party leaders to treat the proposed Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as a "do-or-die mission", cautioning that failure to ensure its success could cost the organisation its very base in the state.

In a late-night virtual meeting held earlier this week with senior state functionaries, district presidents and leaders in charge of booth-level agents' (BLA-2) training, Bhattacharya reportedly minced no words in reminding them that their "air-conditioned rooms and furnished party offices" would be of little use if the SIR exercise falters.

"If you don't work tirelessly to ensure a successful SIR, your AC rooms and beautiful party offices will no longer exist. You won't even find people to attend virtual meetings," Bhattacharya was quoted as saying by party sources present in the meeting.

The BJP's top leadership in Bengal has been conducting a series of review sessions across districts to push for the success of the SIR process, which it believes is crucial to prevent what it claims are "fake and inflated" voter entries in the state's electoral rolls.

According to party insiders, Bhattacharya's remarks were aimed at sections of the organisation accused of treating the exercise "as just another routine political assignment".

He reportedly warned that any negligence in implementing the SIR could prove politically disastrous for the party in the run-up to the 2026 assembly polls.

"Those who think this is one of the many tasks they are required to do are mistaken. If lapses occur at the field level, BJP as a political force in Bengal will face a grim situation after the next assembly election," Bhattacharya told the meeting, according to the sources.

He further cautioned that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) would "capture every district party office" if the BJP failed to tighten its grip on the SIR monitoring exercise.

"After 2026, you may not even have an office to sit in. Those posh offices across districts that you proudly built will be taken over by the ruling party," he said, according to one of the participants.

Bhattacharya's tough message reflects the BJP's growing anxiety over what it describes as "abnormal growth" in the number of voters across most of Bengal's 294 assembly constituencies.

Party functionaries claim that voter rolls have expanded by more than 35 per cent since 2011, far exceeding the "natural" growth rate of 20-21 per cent over 15 years, which they say should be the norm based on demographic data.

BJP's internal assessment has identified as many as 250 constituencies where the voter increase is allegedly "unnatural".

"This is statistically impossible unless there has been large-scale inclusion of illegal voters," said a BJP leader associated with the SIR monitoring team.

The TMC, however, has dismissed these allegations as "baseless", arguing that areas such as New Town have witnessed massive housing expansion and migration of thousands of middle-class families from other parts of the state.

BJP leaders, on the other hand, allege that "Bangladeshi infiltrators and Rohingya settlers" have been accommodated in several pockets, particularly in and around Kolkata's eastern suburbs, to alter electoral demographics, a claim the TMC has repeatedly rubbished.

Meanwhile, the state BJP's top brass has fanned out across districts, urging local leaders to finish booth-level verification and BLA training by next month.

With the Election Commission planning to add nearly 14,000 new polling booths amid prospective Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of rolls in West Bengal, the BJP faces a shortage of Booth Level Agents (BLAs), exposing a critical organisational gap that could weaken its 2026 poll challenge, while the TMC, with no such issues, exudes confidence.

For the TMC, the expansion of polling stations from the existing 80,000 to an estimated 94,000, spread across 294 assembly seats, is less a burden than an opportunity to tighten its grip at the grassroots.

In contrast, the BJP functionaries acknowledge they are planning to cover only about 70 per cent of booths with BLAs during the SIR exercise, well short of what is needed to ensure an effective presence statewide.